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Dart Team's Digest

It’s been a while since the last update, but here’s a summary of some of the recent events in Dart-land.

In the Dart to JavaScript Compiler we're getting ready to deprecate frog and remove it from the SDK. We increased test coverage for dart2js on build bots, fixed a bunch of browser compatibility issues and landed liveness analysis resulting in 3-4% code size reduction and less temporary variables. Finally, we're now generating smaller code for simple tear-off closures.

In Dartium, we're phasing out dart:dom and are now supporting wrapperless dart:html.

For the Dart Editor we now have new and improved Editor documentation! We also improved code completion in the absence of explicit type information. We have improved type inference in if, while, for and for-in statements and all launches now run in checked mode by default. All launches (JavaScript and Dartium) now serve from a server and not from a file: url. (This plays better with loading resources using XHR and the browser security model). Analysis results now cached between sessions which leads to faster start-up. Finally, we fixed a number of issues including, an issue with lots of warnings related to final fields and a performance issue with the outline view.

For Dart Server side libraries we published instructions on building native C/C++ extensions for the standalone Dart VM, landed feature enhancements and bug fixing in the HTTP, File and Directory interfaces. Finally, we've introduced hardening of the APIs to deal gracefully with unexpected arguments.

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"static" means a member is available on the class itself instead of on instances of the class. That's all it means, and it isn't used for anything else. static modifies *members*.

"final" means single-assignment: a final variable or field *must* have an initializer. Once assigned a value, a final variable's value cannot be changed. final modifies *variables*.

"const" has a meaning that's a bit more complex and subtle in Dart. const modifies *values*. You can use it when creating collections, like const [1, 2, 3], and when constructing objects (instead of new) like const Point(2, 3). Here, const means that the object's entire deep state can be determ…

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